America's civilian
space program may be on life support, now that the Space Shuttle's gone. But its
military space program is very much alive -- and about to get much, much bigger.
In the coming decades, the U.S. Air Force plans to pour an additional $36 to $40
billion into its effort to put military and spy satellites in orbit using
commercial rocket services.

The Air Force is using that cash to add 60 launches between 2018
and 2030 to its $35 billion rocket launch effort called the Evolved Expendable
Launch Vehicle. EELV is the Air Force's program to pay private businesses to
build and launch the rockets that carry Defense Department satellites into
orbit. This planned cash infusion would make EELV one of the Pentagon's top ten
spending programs,
InsideDefense points out. This comes just two years after the EELV program
began
experiencing massive cost increases -- that sucked funding from other space
initiatives -- due to a spike in the price of rocket production. (Interestingly,
one of the rockets currently used in the EELV program, the Atlas V, relies on a
Russian engine to get it off the ground.)

For almost a decade, the air service has purchased launches from a
joint business venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing called United Launch
Alliance. However, the Pentagon has recently decided to introduce real
competition to the EELV program starting in 2018. Rocket-makers ATK, Lockheed,
Orbital Sciences and Elon Musk's SpaceX are all planning to bid to send the
military's satellites into space between 2018 and 2030.

While much of the military is facing budget cuts, space systems are
one of the Pentagon's six "key initiatives" to counter adversaries with rapidly
modernizing militaries. These initiatives -- missile defense, space, cyber, the
reserve wings of the military, science and technology research, and the
military's weapon's buying community -- were deemed priority spending areas to
ensure the U.S. can achieve its long term security goals despite a decrease in
defense spending over the next decade.

Ask any Pentagon planner and they will tell you that countries like
China, Russia -- and to a lesser extent Iran -- have been focusing on shaving
down the enormous technological advantage the U.S. military has enjoyed over its
rivals over the last two decades. To do this, foreign militaries are investing
in everything from stealth jets and long range ballistic missiles to cyber
weapons aimed at disrupting U.S. communications networks to anti-satellite
missiles capable of bringing down American spy and GPS navigation satellites.

The Pentagon used to dominate other militaries in space. That dominance is no
longer a given. In early 2007, for instance, China displayed its ability to
destroy satellites when it shot down an aging weather satellite -- a move that
prompted outcry from the U.S. for creating a massive, and potentially dangerous,
debris field in space. In 2011, China conducted more space launches than the
U.S. for the first time ever. Beijing is also introducing its own network of GPS
satellites so that it won't have to rely on the current system that's run by the
U.S. Air Force. It's all part of an expansion of China's "space-based
intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, navigation, meteorological, and
communications satellite constellations," according to a 2013 Pentagon report on
the topic. "In parallel, China is developing a multi-dimensional program to
improve its capabilities to limit or prevent the use of space-based assets by
adversaries during times of crisis or conflict."

So the Pentagon feels its needs more cash for more launches to stay ahead.
The U.S. may be trimming the size of its ground forces, retiring Cold War era
jets, contemplating changes to the military's pay and benefits system and even
cutting NASA's budget in an effort to save cash. But in space, the Pentagon sees
all sorts of room for expansion.